Fatal Knife Attack in Finland Is Investigated as Terrorism
August 20, 2017 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
“We are no longer an island,” Mr. Sipila added.
The knife attack killed two Finnish women. The wounded — five women, two men and a 15-year-old girl — were Finns, an Italian, a Swede and a Briton.
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Crista Granroth, a spokeswoman for the bureau of investigation, said that it seemed that the attacker had deliberately gone after women, and that the men had been wounded while trying to stop him.
The attack occurred a day after the driver of a van in Barcelona, Spain, killed 13 people and injured many others from around the world; hours later, a separate attack in the Spanish town of Cambrils killed one woman. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for both attacks.
The assault in Turku, a city of more than 180,000, began in a main square when a man stabbed a woman, the authorities said. The assailant then ran to another square, where the police apprehended him and took the knife.
Credit
Roni Lehti/Lehtikuva, via Reuters
Wali Hashi, a journalist who saw the episode, said in an interview that a group of people chased the knife-wielding man, who was screaming “God is great” in Arabic. The police declined to confirm whether the assailant had been yelling in Arabic.
The Finnish security service released a report in June saying the Islamic State no longer saw Finland as neutral, and posed a threat to the country. The agency has identified about 350 people as persons of interest, an increase of 80 percent since 2012, it said.
The security service added that an increasing number of those people had “taken part in an armed conflict, expressed willingness to participate in armed activity, or received terrorist training.”
Security was tightened at the airport and at train stations in the capital, Helsinki, about 100 miles to the east. The interior minister, Paula Risikko, said that the police had increased security and patrols across the country, and that border controls had been tightened. The national threat level remained the same as before the attack, the security service said.
The police would not comment on why the investigation had changed to involve suspicion of terrorism, other than to say there were indications of “some ideological feelings, background and thoughts.”
Correction: August 19, 2017
An earlier version of this article, using information from Finland’s national bureau of investigation, misstated the nationality of one of the injured. A Swede, an Italian and a Briton were injured; they were not two Swedes and one Italian.
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